The Center and Margin in the Sa’alik Poetry in the PreIslamic Era in the Light of Cultural Semiotics

Abstract

The critical study views the center and the margin dialectic as an important matter to understand the literary text, taking into consideration the suitability of this duality to study most of literary texts. The research attempts to introspect the Sa’alik poetry in the pre-Islamic era through the view of cultural semiotics, with the help of the dual center and the margin as a part of such semiotics.The research is based on two aspects: the first investigates the appearance of the term “Center and Margin” and its indication in the literary and critical domains, and the existing dialectic in the terminological understanding. The second induces the semiotic “center and margin” in Sa’alik poetry in pre-Islam and its implications in this duality. The poetic model of the research is restricted to the poetry of: aŠ-Šanfarā and ꜤUrawa bin il-Ward and ꜤAmr bin Barrāqa. The research supposes that there are cultural semiotics that distinguish the poetry of these poets, which will explain central aspects of its contents. The old text is viewed through the modern critical lens, away from just displaying the literal indications of the text, to go beyond the cultural indications that distinguish this collection of texts. Keywords: Center and margin, Sa’alik poets, the pre-islamic era, cultural semiotics.